To Protect Our Students, Massachusetts Needs Evidence-Based Reading Legislation
By Megan Harrington-Edward
AJ gestures toward a road sign and loudly says, “No Parking,” his eyes shining brightly with the pride of an emerging reader. I think back to when my three children were in preschool and kindergarten, smiling with delight as they read billboards, bumper stickers, and street signs.
It’s a moment many parents cherish — except AJ isn’t a kindergartener. He is 15 years old.
An eighth grader, AJ is athletic, outgoing, and always the first in class to volunteer to help a friend or teacher, no matter the task. He is also dyslexic. AJ struggles with sound-symbol correspondence; for example, he is unable to consistently recall and produce the sounds associated with the letters of the alphabet. He also has difficulty making sounds in the correct order, reading the word “pat” as “tap” or “apt,” and he frequently confuses words that sound alike, like “vacation” and “station.”
Since first grade, AJ has had a special education plan (IEP) that has acknowledged his reading disability, and his annual goals have historically reflected his need to improve his reading performance. Yet, when AJ started in my middle school classroom, he lacked the ability to name and produce sounds for all 26 letters of the alphabet — how was this possible?
I read AJ’s previous records going back to first grade and found that, although AJ’s IEPs mandated accommodations and time for reading support, they lacked specificity about the nature and quality of that instruction. Year after year, his educators relied on whatever reading programs were available — programs they may not have been trained to use effectively, as mastery of specialized reading instruction is not a requirement when attaining a special education license.
AJ is not alone — 1 in 5 students in America are dyslexic. In Massachusetts, that’s up to 180,000 public school students. Yet, no mandates for adequate educator preparation and implementation of evidence-based literacy curricula exist for students like AJ.
What AJ, and all dyslexic students, need is a continuum of systematic, direct instruction that includes and expands upon the five core components of evidence-based reading. They are phonemic awareness (hearing and separating the sounds in spoken words), phonics (matching sounds to written letters), fluency (reading with sufficient speed, accuracy, and expression to support understanding of written words), vocabulary (recognition of the meaning of individual words as they are used in text), and comprehension (the ability to build a coherent mental model of a written passage).
I teach in a district that has made a significant commitment to providing educators with the resources and support necessary to implement effective literacy instruction at all grade levels. Because of this commitment, I was offered the opportunity to achieve certification as a Dyslexia Practitioner by participating in a fully funded, year-long practicum. In addition to completing a comprehensive online course component, I was required to deliver 65 individualized lessons (roughly 97 hours of direct instruction) under the supervision of my instructor. During this time, I learned the valuable skills needed to effectively instruct students like AJ — teaching sounds and skills in isolation, introducing reading and spelling patterns by syllable type, and practicing each new skill to the point of automatic recognition before introducing new concepts — all skills that I was not required to have mastered before becoming licensed as a special education teacher.
I recently became my school’s first (and only) reading interventionist, working with 30 students just like AJ. Our school is hopeful that we may have the opportunity to expand these efforts in the coming years. In addition to having adequate funding to create more positions like mine, we must ensure that special education teachers like me are prepared to teach students like AJ.
Introduced in January 2025, Massachusetts Bill S.338 would provide our state with a strong start in addressing the issues that impact AJ most. This bill includes provisions for districts to draft literacy plans that address implementation of evidence-based reading curricula, and it allocates resources to districts to provide all teachers of reading with adequate professional development respective to delivering evidence-based reading instruction. This bill also requires the state to issue guidelines for identifying and educating students with reading deficiencies, and making online training modules available and free to all educators. In passing this bill, Massachusetts would join 39 other states and the District of Columbia in adopting our own science of reading legislation.
Today, at 15 years old, AJ is finally learning to read; he can name all letters of the alphabet, and decode words containing short vowel sounds. However, should his family move to another district that is not able to provide him with the instruction he needs, his reading journey might look very different. When it comes to reading, the future of students like AJ shouldn’t depend on luck or zip code — it should be guaranteed by law.
Megan Harrington-Edward is a special education teacher and reading interventionist at Arlington Middle School in Lawrence, and a 2024–2025 Teach Plus Massachusetts Policy Fellow.
